Waitangi - our national day of shame

Yes I hate to say it, but it's true. It seems that we can't get our heads around the fact that we're supposed to remember a contract between the settlers of the time and the indigenous people, the Maori. And remember it without arguing about it. Instead, it's become a day when the Maori air their ongoing grievances, often with each other within the Maori community. This often means that our esteemed leaders get caught up as collateral damage, with previous instances of our Prime Ministers being reduced to tears (Helen Clarke), showered with manure (Don Brash), or other unfortunate incidents.

It is difficult to nail down any one specific reason why this should be so, as there are multiple reasons for dissatisfaction. Maori feel hard done by, and that the Crown never fully paid reparation for their excesses against the Maori people. European descendants often see that the Maori are just whining for the sake of it, or more seriously, trying to bankrupt us so that they can see their issues with suitable redress. I'm just an average New Zealander of European descent, so I can't speak with any authority on these matters. Looking at the Treaty made my eyes glaze over, but looking at the conflicts between Maori and Pakeha (the Maori name for European immigrants) made me angry.

Injustices on both sides have led to generational grievances that don't ever seem to get entirely settled to the satisfaction of either party. As a result, I perceive that Maori, even if they have been through a settlement process, often realise later on: "Oh wait, we never knew THIS..." and kick off another settlement process, bogging the whole procedure down in what amounts to red tape.

Is there a way to fix it? Perhaps. Is there a way to fix it that will entirely satisfy all parties? Not a hope. Can we possibly come to an agreement that everyone can put up with? Perhaps, but it's taking far too long. Members of the current Government want this dealt with, over and done with, and finished up so we as New Zealanders can get on with making this country better. Not we as Pakeha and Maori. New Zealanders. They don't wish any distinction between us. But the Maori want distinction, so they don't lose their culture. And frankly, what race doesn't?

In addition, it also seems that even the Maori can't agree amongst themselves what they want, and neither can the Pakeha. Factions exist both within Maori and within Pakeha that regularly strain attempts at reconciliation, resulting in outbursts that regularly stain our reputation as a multi-racial nation that tolerates diversity, encourages distinctions, and supports culture in a way that few other countries attain to. Put simply, we are not tolerant. We are not supportive of cultural diversity. We don't like distinctions between us, and we don't support other cultures when they conflict with our own solidly held beliefs about how we think the world should be.

We don't like difference. And yet we must have it, or we'll become just another Western country like all the other Western nations. We need all the things I have mentioned. So why can't we stop arguing?

Of games and scripting, and scripting games

Life's not always a game, but it can seem like it

It's been a pretty long time since I've contributed to either of my blogs recently. Not that I've been doing a lot, though I have been contributing to the coffers of Steam and Indie game creators, mainly through the Humble Bundles.

A little humility goes a long way

Humble bundles are collections of (usually) games typically from Indie developers, and the ones I look at are at a knock-down price. In essence, you specify the price, and specify how you want the price divided up amongst various categories. Independent game developers get much-needed profile as well as a little extra cash in their pockets, any charities get a little bonus and the group organising this also gains a slice. And it's all decided by you and me, the prospective purchaser.

You certainly won't find Call of Duty, Halo 4 or any other big AAA titles in these collections, as those are normally funded by organisations the size of Valve, EA and the likes. No, these are little games, often coded by one person, or perhaps more, but usually no more than ten people.

These humble bundles work best when we're not cheap retards that pay one cent and expect seven good quality games. One current way to combat this is to provide basic games for any amount less than the average. Additional games are provided if the prospective purchaser pays more than the average. If we're prepared to put a halfway decent amount of money towards the games, then developers are more inclined to look at this as a viable way of increasing visibility.

The Humble Bundles provide binaries for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. I think that's fantastic, but I noticed something about contributed amounts for various platforms. Windows users provide more than 60% of the purchases, yet they're the cheapest of contributors. On the other hand, Linux buyers provide the greatest amount for contributions even considering their lowest profile. I wonder why that is?

As a result of my various contributions to their respective coffers, I have stellar little gems such as Gish, Toki Tori, Cave Story +, and many others.

I do run the risk though, of running into an awful lot of games that I'll probably buy, play once or twice, and then hardly ever play again. Minecraft seems to be a very rare exception to this.

One small niggle I seem to have, Steam's copy of Doom3.exe doesn't want to work properly on my computer, and nobody actually knows why. I've downloaded the Doom3.exe from ID, and that seems to work fine. In addition, so does the Linux binary. So it seems that the data files are fine, at least. It's just the binaries.

However, in more testing, it seems it might actually be the Steam interface that isn't running something the steamed-Doom executable expects. Once I was running the beta Steam client, it now seems to work properly.

Except for Defense Of The Ancients 2, which has issues of its own that I have yet to understand.

Houston, we have lift-off

On the topic of Minecraft, I cobbled together a script (called minecrafty) to start off a selection of Minecraft launchers. The launcher handles loading modifications to Minecraft, and my script handles other items such as screen brightness, choosing the right launcher and defining the amount of memory devoted to java.

Since then, I've added other functions. I added in the ability to run a specific server, or download versions of Minecraft, and most recently, to download various launchers. Currently it only works under bash, as that has a far better ability to chain commands together. Heck, bash even has functions, and has done from day one. I don't know if CMD.EXE even has functions, though it has callable subroutines, but I do know it was a pig to write for when I last wrote for it. So I write minecrafty in the bash scripting language.

I can't think of much more to add to minecrafty, as it has everything I need it to have. And frankly, that's often what home coding is all about—scratching an itch. I needed to brighten up the screen before launching Minecraft, and reduce the brightness back to normal afterwards, which is how this all started. In doing this, I found out a little more than I really wanted about how to change brightness on individual monitors (and refresh rates) of my two-monitor system. I was also surprised about just how much detail I needed to know about. For example, someone was having total problems starting my script on their system, purely because they hadn't put things in the same place that I had done on my system. That provided me with the impetus to add in a function to download (and install) a launcher. At this stage, the script supports five separate launchers, with no real plans to support any others—as it is, I only use the one launcher anyhow.

Minecraft got a lot of loving

A lot of Minecraft

Wow. Just…wow.

Back about 13 April 2012 at 23:11 (UTC) or so, Minecraft made five million, five hundred and fifty five thousand, five hundred and fifty five sales, and more by now. I even managed to get a screenshot of the event.

Oh, and as the full sized screenshot will show, I was using a favourite plugin of mine—FlashBlock.

Feel like bacon, anyone?

Let's ham it up

Bacon and eggs go together like…well, bacon and eggs. They're great as a pie, or even on their own without pastry. However, one place where they really don't go together is in a game. Except for one family of games.

First, take a family of birds. They like life. And they like eggs. Funny that, because that's how they become birds. And then there's pigs. Pigs like eggs too, but not for the same reasons. They don't need the eggs to become birds first. They just like eggs. Cooked. Any way they can.

Needless to say, the birds don't like this. In fact they get rather angry about the fact that the pigs (green, in this case) have come along and stolen their eggs, in preparation of a right pig-out. Yes, that's right, I think you've all figured it out by now.

Take some angry birds…

In the game Angry Birds and their sequels, you play the part of some really really angry birds. You're given a catapult, and different sorts of birds, all to kill any pigs on screen. The fewer birds you have to use, the better your score. Oh, and it's even better if you wipe out every piece of structure protecting the pigs too, but killing the pigs is where it's at. Or releasing the other birds, if you happen to have bought Angry Birds - Rio.

It's become kind of a cult classic, but I've no idea what following it has, save that it comes top of the category at the App Store for downloading. Suffice it to say that this may not be the game for COD4 or MW3 players, unless they're tired of playing with all their buddies online, and just want some downtime, to rest up the braincells.

Don't think you'll be resting them with this game, though. Even though the target is simple—kill all pigs (or release all the captive birds)— that can get surprisingly hard to do, especially if you're after the full three stars that nearly every level offers. And then there are the chances to get golden eggs, which unlock further levels for you to play on. If you think “Pshaw, how hard can killing pigs be?” then try going through all four games, completing all levels, and all goldenegg levels. When you've succeeded in that, decide whether you want to run back to MW3.

Then there's the inevitable chase for the highest score you can possibly get in each level. I don't quite know how the score is calculated, but the higher you get, the more points you have. And you might even get a golden egg level out of it. If you feel like releasing a bit of frustration, then I'm sorry to say that some of the levels in this game are infuriatingly hard to get. Needless to say, I haven't finished all the levels yet.

The games are cheap enough, at only $4.95 each you're not going to have months of gametime, but it'll while away enough time for the price. The most recent episode costs $5.95, but that's because it's only just been released. In addition, the games are not just available on your humble PC. No, sir. It made an appearance in the smartphone market when I first saw it, and it had become a classic top-of-category by then. Once tablets started becoming more common, it was only a matter of time before Angry Birds (and sequels) topped the charts at the App Store. In addition, you can even play some of Angry Birds for free, in a number of ways. It's available as a Google Chrome applet, a Google Plus game, as a Facebook game, or even as a standalone demo for the PC/Mac (running on OS X)/Android/iPad or smartphone.

And it's a good alternative to Minecraft.

EDIT: Unfortunately, these games are no longer available for download in their PC versions from the original producer, so the only way you can get them is either on disc from retailers that still sell them, or from Steam, who currently only sells Angry Birds: Space through their platform.

Piracy and its effects (link to article)

I've just finished reading an article about piracy that has opened my eyes a bit more than they already were. I'm not going to bother summarising the points in the article, instead, I'm going to point to it instead.

It's available as the Piracy article on tweakguides.com.

'nuff said.
Oh, and due to the controversial nature of the current feeling about it, I deliberately won't be accepting comments. Sorry, folks.